June 29, 2012

The second milestone in the Ubuntu 12.10 development cycle has been made available for download.

Anyone expecting to find lots of changes to gasp in wonderment at will be disappointed, though there are a handful of updated packages – including Firefox, LibreOffice and Ubuntu One – bringing some minor features/UI changes.

The majority of changes in this milestone are underneath the hood.

Alpha releases are not recommended for installing unless you’re a developer, but are suitable for testing using live media or in virtual machines.

It seems Google's Android apps are getting major updated one after the other. This time is Google Currents and Google Drive.

In the case of Google Currents, the biggest change is that finally, it fits into the Android 4.x design guidelines. That pesky menu, it's up top where it ought to be. You might also notice, that it's got a new, less colorful logo too. The full changelog for Currents reads a little like this:

User interface - updated to Android standards

Top navigation bar - auto hide, touch to show

Library/trending toggle - moved to navigation bar

Performance enhancements

Bug fixes

Google Drive also received an update. One of the biggest new features available in Drive on Android, is the ability to upload, and download, all file types to and from your Drive. Pretty much a standard requirement for cloud storage. The changelog for Drive reads as follows:

Quickly find files that have been recently opened, edited or shared with you

Upload/Download all file types to/from your Google Drive

Selecting contacts to share with is easier

Faster navigation of folders when syncing in the background

Choose text alignment in the documents editor

The updates should already be available in your Play Store on your Android device. If you haven't updated then what are you waiting for?

Enterbrain's Famitsu.com website reported that 1,618,621 units of Nintendo's Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2 games were purchased in their first weekend in Japan. Famitsu.com also reported that since release, 32,855,241 Nintendo DS units have sold (including DS Lite, DSi, DSi LL/XL) and 6,288,334 Nintendo 3DS units within Japan alone, as of June 17.

The companion games are set for a 3rd quarter release in North America and Europe under the titles Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2.

Nintendo streamed its second English trailer for the games on Thursday.

Pokémon Black Version 2 and Pokémon White Version 2 are set two years after the first Pokémon Black & White games. They will introduce two new forms of legendary Pokémon (Black Kyurem and White Kyurem) and new characters. New locations have also been added to the land of Isshu (known as Unova in North America).